Valuing raw 3pt% has come to an end

[ghillphx]

Everyone knows Steph is a better 3pt shooter than Lebron. This post is completely unnecessary. I pledge absolutely nothing, and thanks for two ridiculous options OP

[TheNG]

Sure

[Snakebites]

Over the years it’s been getting a lot better, but I think with Lebron officially shooting a better percentage than Steph from 3 this year, I’d like to get a pledge from all that the days of using 3pt% to judge shooters is over.

3 point shooting has to be judged within context of the type of shot, the spot on the floor, and the defensive presence.

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I’ll go ahead and assume you mean valuing it exclusively needs to come to an end.

Lebron has made major strides as a shooter this year. But I don’t think anyone in the know values that above what Steph does as a shooter in nearly 12 attempts per game.

[ghillphx]

I mean...is anyone arguing this or is it just something you are making up?

All this stuff just lives rent free in the OP's head.

[TheNG]

Its amazing to me how many people are calling out the OP here, and saying “of course we don’t do this and know that Curry is a better 3 pt shooter”, yet when it comes to comparing Lebron to older players in 3 pt shooting, all that goes out the window. I wrote a long post about this a few weeks ago and got laughed at for saying Lebron is a much better 3 pt shooter than Bird ever was. A couple games after that post, Lebron led a 20 point comeback against the Clippers that included 6 3pt shots in the 4th quarter, all of which except for one wide open shot, were well contested/off the dribble/step backs. Basically a bunch of shots we’ve never seen Bird even attempt, let alone hit, let alone hit 6 of them in ONE quarter lol.

I keep seeing people here say things like, my eye test is good enough that i can evaluate these stats and still understand why Curry is better… yet when it comes to Bird, he would somehow be a top 3 or top 5 or top 10 3pt shooter today lol. The mental gymnastics you need to do for all that is impressive.

Truth is, if you can truly take in account the shot difficulty and most of all, the type of defense that is thrown at you, which I haven’t seen mentioned once here, and you leave all your bias against today’s players and favoritism for the good ole boys, you’d soon realize not only is Lebron is a much better 3pt shooter than Bird ever was… in fact, you’d have to go pretty far down the list of today’s best shooters to place Bird in the right spot. Bird had a couple feet of room before his defender pretty much every time he had the ball behind the 3pt line. Imagine defending Curry or Lebron like that lol.

It’s fascinating to me how much people want to keep claiming that players in the earlier years to mid years of the league were so much better than todays, I’ll never understand this, it’s mostly only in this sport. Imagine talking to a super fan of skateboarding (another very young sport) and them claiming Stacy Peralta is a much better skateboarder than todays top guys. There’s teenagers that are better than that guy ever was lol. And of course its a very different sport but the evolution evidence is the same. I saw a like 14 year kid on YouTube do a 1080 on a half pipe lol. That didn’t exist in the 80s…

Anyways, sorry to highjack your thread OP but it’s a really good thread btw, I completely agree with you and I can only hope that people are able to use that same thinking energy and transfer it their comparisons of older players too… but I doubt it.

In life there is a bias towards innovators and early adopters. When guys witness in real time innovators and early adoptors perform excellently, it is hard to then 40 years later give credit to someone that is literally 10% better than the innovator and early adopter. It took 40 years for that guy and his era to catch up. The current great would need to be just as advanced and superior to his contemporaries as the innovator was to his back in his era. LeBron may be a better three point shooter than Bird, but LeBron isn't an unquestionably better three point shooter than all of his competition like Bird was.

This is amazingly said right here, and really highlights what I mean. Sadly, for most of this forum, its much worse than that. The way most talk around here is that Bird is BOTH 10% better than everyone AND an innovator/early adopter lol. Its really weird this sports obsession with lifting legends(and they very much are legends) up to levels of play they were never at. Just think of all the threads that say things like "how much would (insert name) average today?" I can't think of any other sport that does this at this level, is it cause its harder to tell in basketball? I dont know...

And no, Lebron is not unquestionably better than his competiton today, compared to how Bird and the MJs were in the 80s/90s, I have to completely agree with that and I always have. If thats the main argument for why Jordan is the GOAT over Lebron or Bird is the 2nd GOAT shooter behind Curry, than sure, I'd agree with that. But if the question - "who is the best basketball player" is really about who was the best at playing the sport of basketball compared to everyone who ever played basketball (or the same for shooter), well the answer is a bunch of players playing today, or at least a few. Shooters would be even more obviously, that skill has absolutely skyrocketed.

Also, its not really Lebron's fault that he isnt more than, lets say like you said 10% better than everyone hes playing against today. It is MUCH easier to be way better than others when a professional sport is newer than when its been around for a long time. In this case the difference is really when the sport became way more popular. The league had been around a good 30 years or so before Birds, but it wasnt a very popular sport. Once the popularity really went off, thanks to the MJs and the Bird, the level of competition in this sport became absolutely ridiculous. The amount of training it took for teenagers and even kids I'm sure more than doubled. This is the MAIN reason why players today are much better. We're talking about thousands and thousands more hours in some cases of playing and practicing the sport. I made it to college ball in Canada (so not very far lol), training pretty damn hard but I also played a ton of baseball and football and enjoyed life lol. I can't imagine how much better I would be at ball if I had focused that much more time into it, it would be ridiculous. And I still wouldnt even sniff how much time Curry has probably spent perfecting this craft. Its sad the amount of haters this guy has, what he did to this sport is absolutely magical. And yet we have a tons of older fans here that think he's a weakling and wouldn't be that good in the 80s or 90s lol. Again, just weird.

But yea, thanks for a great response and so true. I wasn't expecting that to be honest

So, according to your logic, if we take a random kid who finished his PhD in Physics, will you say he is better at physics than Isaac Newton? Because he probably knows more in Physics.
I think it makes more sense to say that if Isaac Newton grew up today, he will be better at Physics than 99.99% of PhD graduates.

[Haldi]

In life there is a bias towards innovators and early adopters. When guys witness in real time innovators and early adoptors perform excellently, it is hard to then 40 years later give credit to someone that is literally 10% better than the innovator and early adopter. It took 40 years for that guy and his era to catch up. The current great would need to be just as advanced and superior to his contemporaries as the innovator was to his back in his era. LeBron may be a better three point shooter than Bird, but LeBron isn't an unquestionably better three point shooter than all of his competition like Bird was.

This is amazingly said right here, and really highlights what I mean. Sadly, for most of this forum, its much worse than that. The way most talk around here is that Bird is BOTH 10% better than everyone AND an innovator/early adopter lol. Its really weird this sports obsession with lifting legends(and they very much are legends) up to levels of play they were never at. Just think of all the threads that say things like "how much would (insert name) average today?" I can't think of any other sport that does this at this level, is it cause its harder to tell in basketball? I dont know...

And no, Lebron is not unquestionably better than his competiton today, compared to how Bird and the MJs were in the 80s/90s, I have to completely agree with that and I always have. If thats the main argument for why Jordan is the GOAT over Lebron or Bird is the 2nd GOAT shooter behind Curry, than sure, I'd agree with that. But if the question - "who is the best basketball player" is really about who was the best at playing the sport of basketball compared to everyone who ever played basketball (or the same for shooter), well the answer is a bunch of players playing today, or at least a few. Shooters would be even more obviously, that skill has absolutely skyrocketed.

Also, its not really Lebron's fault that he isnt more than, lets say like you said 10% better than everyone hes playing against today. It is MUCH easier to be way better than others when a professional sport is newer than when its been around for a long time. In this case the difference is really when the sport became way more popular. The league had been around a good 30 years or so before Birds, but it wasnt a very popular sport. Once the popularity really went off, thanks to the MJs and the Bird, the level of competition in this sport became absolutely ridiculous. The amount of training it took for teenagers and even kids I'm sure more than doubled. This is the MAIN reason why players today are much better. We're talking about thousands and thousands more hours in some cases of playing and practicing the sport. I made it to college ball in Canada (so not very far lol), training pretty damn hard but I also played a ton of baseball and football and enjoyed life lol. I can't imagine how much better I would be at ball if I had focused that much more time into it, it would be ridiculous. And I still wouldnt even sniff how much time Curry has probably spent perfecting this craft. Its sad the amount of haters this guy has, what he did to this sport is absolutely magical. And yet we have a tons of older fans here that think he's a weakling and wouldn't be that good in the 80s or 90s lol. Again, just weird.

But yea, thanks for a great response and so true. I wasn't expecting that to be honest

So, according to your logic, if we take a random kid who finished his PhD in Physics, will you say he is better at physics than Isaac Newton? Because he probably knows more in Physics.
I think it makes more sense to say that if Isaac Newton grew up today, he will be better at Physics than 99.99% of PhD graduates.

We have no idea what Isaac Newton would be like if he grew up today, he could be anything really lol. But let’s say he grew up into physics, and was as dedicated, I don’t doubt that could be true, or he could be only as good as a lot of others too, hard to say. Again, its much easier to absolutely excel compared to others when the others are much weaker in said field.

What we do know, is how Newton actually was, and how knowledgeable he was, for the most part anyways. And you said yourself, the kid today would have more knowledge. This is of course because of the vast more knowledge we have available today, again, thanks to Newton and others, but that is the fact.

[TheNG]

This is amazingly said right here, and really highlights what I mean. Sadly, for most of this forum, its much worse than that. The way most talk around here is that Bird is BOTH 10% better than everyone AND an innovator/early adopter lol. Its really weird this sports obsession with lifting legends(and they very much are legends) up to levels of play they were never at. Just think of all the threads that say things like "how much would (insert name) average today?" I can't think of any other sport that does this at this level, is it cause its harder to tell in basketball? I dont know...

And no, Lebron is not unquestionably better than his competiton today, compared to how Bird and the MJs were in the 80s/90s, I have to completely agree with that and I always have. If thats the main argument for why Jordan is the GOAT over Lebron or Bird is the 2nd GOAT shooter behind Curry, than sure, I'd agree with that. But if the question - "who is the best basketball player" is really about who was the best at playing the sport of basketball compared to everyone who ever played basketball (or the same for shooter), well the answer is a bunch of players playing today, or at least a few. Shooters would be even more obviously, that skill has absolutely skyrocketed.

Also, its not really Lebron's fault that he isnt more than, lets say like you said 10% better than everyone hes playing against today. It is MUCH easier to be way better than others when a professional sport is newer than when its been around for a long time. In this case the difference is really when the sport became way more popular. The league had been around a good 30 years or so before Birds, but it wasnt a very popular sport. Once the popularity really went off, thanks to the MJs and the Bird, the level of competition in this sport became absolutely ridiculous. The amount of training it took for teenagers and even kids I'm sure more than doubled. This is the MAIN reason why players today are much better. We're talking about thousands and thousands more hours in some cases of playing and practicing the sport. I made it to college ball in Canada (so not very far lol), training pretty damn hard but I also played a ton of baseball and football and enjoyed life lol. I can't imagine how much better I would be at ball if I had focused that much more time into it, it would be ridiculous. And I still wouldnt even sniff how much time Curry has probably spent perfecting this craft. Its sad the amount of haters this guy has, what he did to this sport is absolutely magical. And yet we have a tons of older fans here that think he's a weakling and wouldn't be that good in the 80s or 90s lol. Again, just weird.

But yea, thanks for a great response and so true. I wasn't expecting that to be honest

So, according to your logic, if we take a random kid who finished his PhD in Physics, will you say he is better at physics than Isaac Newton? Because he probably knows more in Physics.
I think it makes more sense to say that if Isaac Newton grew up today, he will be better at Physics than 99.99% of PhD graduates.

We have no idea what Isaac Newton would be like if he grew up today, he could be anything really lol. But let’s say he grew up into physics, and was as dedicated, I don’t doubt that could be true, or he could be only as good as a lot of others too, hard to say. Again, its much easier to absolutely excel compared to others when the others are much weaker in said field.

What we do know, is how Newton actually was, and how knowledgeable he was, for the most part anyways. And you said yourself, the kid today would have more knowledge. This is of course because of the vast more knowledge we have available today, again, thanks to Newton and others, but that is the fact.

But when people do these hypothetical "what if some player played today/back then" they don't care so much about whether the skill is more crafted today or back then. What they care about is "which player is better" reagardless his diet/sleeping habits/side job/access to trainer. They try to catch the essence of the player, where his natural skills can lead him too. Again, all hypothetical. But I think in that sense, the do want the Isaac Newtons of the past to be the top of their field even today, in order to compare them to someone like Stephen Hawking/Albert Einstein or whoever is the top Physicist today, and not just to any PhD graduate. Otherwuse, the discussion is not so interesting.

[tsherkin]

Is anyone seriously arguing that this proves Lebron is a better shooter than Steph?

No one, yeah. No one worth speaking to, anyhow.

Steph averaged 12 3PA per game this year (61% 3PAr). Lebron averaged 5 (29% 3PAr).

Yeah, even the first hint of context sheds the appropriate light.

It IS, of course, quite impressive to see Lebron shooting better from 3 than he has since that one year in Miami. If only he could upgrade his FT shooting at the same time, you know? But little things, they matter. A useful adaptation this late in his career, no doubt.

[Haldi]

So, according to your logic, if we take a random kid who finished his PhD in Physics, will you say he is better at physics than Isaac Newton? Because he probably knows more in Physics.
I think it makes more sense to say that if Isaac Newton grew up today, he will be better at Physics than 99.99% of PhD graduates.

We have no idea what Isaac Newton would be like if he grew up today, he could be anything really lol. But let’s say he grew up into physics, and was as dedicated, I don’t doubt that could be true, or he could be only as good as a lot of others too, hard to say. Again, its much easier to absolutely excel compared to others when the others are much weaker in said field.

What we do know, is how Newton actually was, and how knowledgeable he was, for the most part anyways. And you said yourself, the kid today would have more knowledge. This is of course because of the vast more knowledge we have available today, again, thanks to Newton and others, but that is the fact.

But when people do these hypothetical "what if some player played today/back then" they don't care so much about whether the skill is more crafted today or back then. What they care about is "which player is better" reagardless his diet/sleeping habits/side job/access to trainer. They try to catch the essence of the player, where his natural skills can lead him too. Again, all hypothetical. But I think in that sense, the do want the Isaac Newtons of the past to be the top of their field even today, in order to compare them to someone like Stephen Hawking/Albert Einstein or whoever is the top Physicist today, and not just to any PhD graduate. Otherwuse, the discussion is not so interesting.

Yea but why compare the hypotheticals at all. Why not compare what they actually were. Not really fair for Newton because of hundreds of years of difference but for basketball players its really not the same, its within 20-30 years, hell I remember it lol. Within my lifetime Ive seen players become quite a bit better over the time, and yet, people my exact age be like nope, na, never happened… why?? I don’t get it, its so obvious but nope, na, never. The simple answer is the very response I got from SelfishPlayer. People just don’t see it unless its at least the same level of better than it was back then or more actually. So by that logic, no one can ever surpass an older GOAT because we can never have that low of a playing field again. I kinda find that sillier tbh.

[og15]

Its amazing to me how many people are calling out the OP here, and saying “of course we don’t do this and know that Curry is a better 3 pt shooter”, yet when it comes to comparing Lebron to older players in 3 pt shooting, all that goes out the window. I wrote a long post about this a few weeks ago and got laughed at for saying Lebron is a much better 3 pt shooter than Bird ever was. A couple games after that post, Lebron led a 20 point comeback against the Clippers that included 6 3pt shots in the 4th quarter, all of which except for one wide open shot, were well contested/off the dribble/step backs. Basically a bunch of shots we’ve never seen Bird even attempt, let alone hit, let alone hit 6 of them in ONE quarter lol.

I keep seeing people here say things like, my eye test is good enough that i can evaluate these stats and still understand why Curry is better… yet when it comes to Bird, he would somehow be a top 3 or top 5 or top 10 3pt shooter today lol. The mental gymnastics you need to do for all that is impressive.

Truth is, if you can truly take in account the shot difficulty and most of all, the type of defense that is thrown at you, which I haven’t seen mentioned once here, and you leave all your bias against today’s players and favoritism for the good ole boys, you’d soon realize not only is Lebron is a much better 3pt shooter than Bird ever was… in fact, you’d have to go pretty far down the list of today’s best shooters to place Bird in the right spot. Bird had a couple feet of room before his defender pretty much every time he had the ball behind the 3pt line. Imagine defending Curry or Lebron like that lol.

It’s fascinating to me how much people want to keep claiming that players in the earlier years to mid years of the league were so much better than todays, I’ll never understand this, it’s mostly only in this sport. Imagine talking to a super fan of skateboarding (another very young sport) and them claiming Stacy Peralta is a much better skateboarder than todays top guys. There’s teenagers that are better than that guy ever was lol. And of course its a very different sport but the evolution evidence is the same. I saw a like 14 year kid on YouTube do a 1080 on a half pipe lol. That didn’t exist in the 80s…

Anyways, sorry to highjack your thread OP but it’s a really good thread btw, I completely agree with you and I can only hope that people are able to use that same thinking energy and transfer it their comparisons of older players too… but I doubt it.

I think what you're citing here is interesting, but some differences make it not a direct comparison because now we're delving into somewhat hypothetical, while what the OP listed is directly comparable data.

In seasons with 1.5+ attempts, Bird shot 38.9% or higher in 7/8 seasons and 40%+ in 6/8 seasons. Obviously it was a different time. Generally most teams can create open looks (catch and shoot corner three, transition, pick and pop, etc) up to 6-7 3PA for a guy like Bird who had excellent off ball screens and would be used as a screener and in movement, so one would expect that if it is strategized (like we do now) which means he's working on it, you wouldn't expect the percentages to go lower than the 40%+ range he shot on ~2-3 attempts. We already know Bird could come off movement and make shots effectively and we know he had range, so obviously we can envision that we have many options of how to generate good 3PT shots for him.

Obviously as we know, the fewer 3PA you take as a first option (below ~2-3 per game), generally the lower your 3PT% will be due to heaves, late clock, etc having a disproportionate impact on percentage as they become a larger amount of total attempts at lower amounts.

The affect of attempts on 3PA is not linear for first options, it is more likely to have a positive correlation to 3PA up to around 3 attempts, then stabilizes, then depending on the player, it will decrease at a certain point, probably around 7-8+ when you start taking a higher percentage of difficult ones to get that many up.

So there is some nuance, and we shouldn't look at the relationship of percentage to attempts as a directly linear one where more attempts = lower percentage. Initially it is opposite, then there's a threshold where it starts to reduce percentage, but that threshold is different for different players too.

I agree with most of this, but I'm never a fan of the whole " we can imagine that Bird could hit much higher difficulty shots than he did if they ran plays like that for him back then... but hey, they didnt". There's a reasons those plays weren't an option back than, its cause no one was that good of a shooter that they could shoot very high difficulty shots like that without being very inefficient, including Bird. There is a massive difference between coming off a screen and setting your feet perfectly, catching the ball and the defender just jogging over to you and then having plenty of time to release, compared to what Curry does. There is a massive difference between someone setting a pick for you, guy barely fights through it cause he doesnt think you're gonna shoot from out there so you shoot a wide open shot from one or two slow dribbles compared to a fast action tight cover pick and shoot where your defender fights hard through the screen but gets caught just long enough to know you have a split second to shoot if you go around hard. Same thing with stepbacks or any shotgun resets where the guy is still right behind you and so many others. If Bird was to try all of these kinds of shots, he would be wildly inefficient, he'd probably hit like 1 in 10 because he was THAT good for back then, where most of us would be 0 out of 10 lol. THAT's why they didn't do that back then. Its not cause coaches were big meanies, or it was uncool to shoot threes (which I've heard here before lol). Its cause the level of practice had not reached there yet. It would've taken Bird an insane amount of practice to get to that level. But we know he never did.

Sure, we can imagine that IF Bird had done all of Curry's practice and training, he could be as good at shooting. But thats the whole point, is that he didn't. Hell,a guy like Lebron, who isnt even one of the league's top shooters, trained way harder at that (and everything else for that matter) than Bird ever did. I really hate when we try to give guys attributes that they never had. We know exactly how good of a player Bird was, and I dont mind saying, if Bird played today, exactly how he was back then, there are some things he would adapt to quickly. But he would not become an insanely better three shooter just like that. That takes years and years of insane training, which if we reran Bird's career arc and he trained exactly as much as he did, but focused on those things more, there would be a lot of great Bird qualities we'd lose.

How did we get from LeBron to Curry? Totally threw me off with this.

Let's not get carried away. We are talking about a top tier NBA level shot maker here. If it's not a strong contest, a guy at the level of Bird isn't even noticing it. I don't think we should oversell the point here by suggesting that if a defense was running towards him it would be a new thing for him because not he's a few feet back from an area he shoots at with lots of defenders coming.

Offenses were set up for shots inside the 3PT there was not much of a concept of utilizing the three, but of course we know he was making tons of tough long 2PT. Yes, in general there was less 3PT shooting ability, but we're not even talking about the embracing of three's off the dribble etc, but simply even spotting up the guys with rent frequently enough.

I wouldn't expect Bird to be taking Curry shots. I'd expect Bird to be taking the types of three's that someone like and just throwing out a name, Georges Niang takes. Why would we be comparing his shot type to a guard, you know? Doesn't make sense.

When you can do off ball movement like him and can be used as a screener, modern coaches will easily generate a good amount of three's for you in their offense.

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The vast majority of guys in the NBA grew up with being taught to take one dribble inside the arc against a hard closeout and take the mid range.

Analytics said the side step was a better shot. Do you know how long it took these guys to add it? The next day. Redick mentioned this in his podcast with Cam Johnson.

We're not talking about Bird becoming an on ball 3PT shot creator and dancing like Luka or taking 10+ 3PA. We're talking about pick and pop, pin down, catch and shoot, side step and shoot, DHO with late defender, etc. Most of that isn't even adding anything, it's just being set up behind the arc more often.

The options aren't aren't Steph like three's or only take 3 a game, there's a wide gap between those options.

[docholliday99]

Context is everything and really a terrible comparison, as one of the comments had Harden with 540 step back 3's in 18/19 and Wemby 52 this season. Still, I respect Wemby's improvement, it's come a lot faster than I anticipated; a step back 3 for Wemby would be akin to Kareem's skyhook (which he's also working on and developing) - he really is going to break the NBA.

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